Avoiding crop establishment issues from fertiliser

Seasonal Updates – Dr Chris Dowling

Plant tissue analysis has generally been the poor cousin of soil analysis when it comes to managing crop nutrition in broadacre crops. This is despite plant tissue testing having distinct superiority to soil testing in some situations and for some nutrients such as the trace elements. Long regarded as a vital nutrient management tool in many intensive crops, it can help fill many information gaps on broadacre crop nutrition. Broadacre cropping farming systems continue to evolve creating change in both the root zone distribution and availability of nutrients. Issues such as nutrient stratification (P and K), nutrient interaction with soil amendments and newly responsive nutrients are now key focuses of research. As a result, it can be important to look to plant feedback to understand in season nutrient availability as a logical backup for soil testing, especially where nutrient management has changed and no soil test calibration is available.

With the staged release of the Opterra platform for digital agriculture across 2020, Back Paddock is calling for SoilMate users that would to like transition to Opterra FertRec™, the new-web-based application with SoilMate-like capability.